When punching sheet metal on punching machines or combined punching and laser cutting machines the chips and pieces punched or cut from the sheet may be removed, for example via a suctioning system. Removing the chips and pieces punched out helps prevent the pieces from resting on the sheet metal and damaging the sheet metal during a travel movement since collisions or snagging of the remnants with the sheet can happen. Accordingly, chip suctioning devices can be provided in the punching machines or punching and laser cutting machines.
Notwithstanding the implementation of a chip suctioning device the risk of a failure still remains in the machine, in particular failure due to a contamination of sieves in an extraction line (or conduit) of the suctioning device and/or failure due to a leakage of a chip flap of the suctioning device.
In view of the risk of failure associated with contamination of the sieves and leakage of the chip flaps, the sieves are generally frequently purged and physically checked for tightness of the chip suctioning device by means of a separate device when the sheet metal processing machine, e.g., the punching machine or the punching and laser cutting machine, does not work. Since this maintenance procedure is very sophisticated, these measures are generally performed often after collisions or snagging has happened.